eevBLAB #10 - Why Learn Basic Electronics?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 พ.ค. 2015
- A reddit user asks what is the point in learning basic electronics these days when you can do everything with off the shelf modules and boards like Arduinos and the like.
They make it super easy to build stuff, so why does anyone need any knowledge of basic electronics any more?
/ i_am_confused_what_is_...
Forum: www.eevblog.com/forum/eevblab/...
EEVblog Main Web Site: www.eevblog.com
The 2nd EEVblog Channel: / eevblog2
Support the EEVblog through Patreon!
/ eevblog
EEVblog Amazon Store (Dave gets a cut):
astore.amazon.com/eevblogstore-20
Donations:
www.eevblog.com/donations/
Projects:
www.eevblog.com/projects/
Electronics Info Wiki:
www.eevblog.com/wiki/ - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![บุกร้านไอศกรีม VJ วุ้นเส้น !!!! [ดูคลิปเต็มหน้าช่อง] #Short | PANG ORNHIRA](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/g549nEhKZdc/mqdefault.jpg)
There is only one thing to say: I agree with that.
amen
Dude I love ur battery vids, i learned so much off the battery capacity vid and am now expand of it.
+
but, let's say that is learning electronic wasted time... ok... we will stop learn electronics becouse we have arduino and others staf... and that is ok... but... after 10, 20 years till now we will use the same arduino and others stuf... why??? becouse we are stop learning electronics and we using arduino and nobody will not design beter arduino beter staf, becouse we will not know to design new staf... we will not know anything but hooking arduino from past... we will stuck in the past....
Love your videos! Give a man a fish, feed them for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed them for life.
Because knowing why you just blew up your new toy is important before you do exactly the same thing second time around :P
Darren Woods True!
Darren Woods Because discarded LED TVs and monitors are great for the cost of a handful of electrolytic caps in the PSU.
hhahaha so true
EEVblog Because I can and it's fun?
No thanks I had spam for breakfast
.
I'm not into electronics but it certainly can be a good thing to know. Long story short: My brother-in-law years ago got a CD ROM drive for Christmas (back when it was the new tech) and hooked it up to his stereo system and then freaked out when the output was only in mono. He was crushed (he and his dad are audiophiles). Turns out a stereo model was another $150 or so. His dad, who does know electronics, took a look at the audio interface and realized that all that was needed was to de-solder two wires and swap them, and then re-solder. Instant stereo. The difference between a mono and stereo CD drive was a buck fifty and two swapped wires. Talk about a scam.
This is the reason why I want learn right here. Having knowledge about things is vital. Not only for you but for your pockets.
Great story. The lesson learned was worth more than the $150 saved :-)
A mono CD player doesn't even make much sense. A CD is inherently stereo and the complex, expensive part of any cd player reads both channels whether it wants to or not
@@Autotrope Fake news. There was never a mono CD ROM. Go a make up a new one.
yeah this story sounds more like a quality defect more than anything but still nice that the man fixed it
I wholeheartedly agree with you Dave. As you said, absolutely nothing wrong with picking up an Arduino and programming it, it is just not electronics.
hi guys, the greatest success that ive had was by using the Gregs Electro Blog (just google it) definately the best info that I've tried.
Seems like more people need some electronics-fundamentals than you thought!? Isn't that reason enough to make more fundamental-videos again, Dave? I would watch them... and need them:)
billyrubin666 I agree. More fundamental videos would be great !
billyrubin666 Oh, yeah! Please!
Also, more dumpster diving! I surely miss those!
exactly. going back to basics would help alot of us just starting out. Dumpster diving would be fun too.😊
billyrubin666 yeah i learned all of from dave about opamps before that i didn't knew nothing about them, also it's silly because i have used them in circuits, and i'm almost graduated university.
Plus 1
It's just so much fun to do. There's something magical about sitting over your own etched circuit board, soldering on the parts and then seeing it spring to life. Just awesome! :)
As a programmer I agree that arduinos and raspberry pies only make you a programmer, not a legit electronics guy.
I disagree; tinkering with arduinos and raspberry will eventually push you into learning electronics. May not be fully fledged, that's true; but nonetheless, you'll be figuring out the fundamentals soon enough.
@@jaguarke069 yes when you start exploring those fundamentals that is when you start to become more of an electronics guy. Just using the arduino and Pis by themselves and putting shields together and making it all work is not electronics
Arduino doesn't make you a programmer at all. Arduino is like 'Paint by Numbers' You may end up with a pretty painting but you are not an artist.
@@jackevans2386 I have noticed this as well alot of Arduino programming is just importing and using a ton of external functions made by someone else and then writing a bit of your own code to tie it all together.
arduino doesn't make you a programmers you're still using someone library lol whether is software or hardware you're still an end user.
I think the point is that _someone_ has got to make the arduinos, teensies, and even the iphones or android phones of tomorrow.
Do you want to build stuff yourself? Then you have to learn your basic electronics. If you just want to put together something that _someone else_ built, then maybe you don't need. But you'll have to pay someone else to fix the thing if for any reason it stops working. Or throw it away and buy another one.
allluckyseven This is probably the best explanation
allluckyseven Good argument, but just to play with the argument:
Lets exchange "build stuff" with "grow food". Sounds silly at first, because most of us are living pretty good on the agricultural food surplus, but the world isn´t getting bigger in the same rate as humans reproduce. Someone has to feed the guy that makes the next iPhone.
You can't really learn it all. I've saved a hell of a lot of money by working on my own vehicles, but I don't have the time or mental capacity to also learn how to be my own doctor, my own lawyer, my own plumber, etc. You can't master everything. You're going to end up having to pay someone for something.
Great video. I'm a child of the 1960's - the HeathKit era! So I still love this stuff and have worked in it for 40 years!
mechanical engineer reporting ... basic electronics is an important part of every single day at work for me. far more important than fluids or even dynamics. basic analog circuits is one of the most important things i ever learned.
Yup.
The same kind of question would be:
I am confused what is the point in learning how to play guitar, when you can switch on the radio, MP3 or whatever, and listen to it?
dismayer666 Well, he still wants to tinker with stuff right ?
I think he takes tools like the Arduinos and such for learning platforms and projects basic building blocks. He doesn't seem look further down the optimisation road since "everything" can be done with these now.
TheSliderW I'd suggest :
"What's the point in learning how to swim when you can wear a life jacket ?"
Or
"What's the point in learning how to read when you can listen to an audiobook ?"
It basically boils down to having someone do the hard work for you. You're either active or passive.
TheSliderW
Sure, I don't condemn the guy :)
Well, I agree, but if he wants to i.e. add some more LEDs, he needs to use a transisor, and that's where the story starts :) And sooner or later such a man would learn some basics. Of course if he's serious about all this stuff.
As Dave said, we enjoy the process of building/making electronics, and that's fun for me.
Cheers!
dismayer666
Agree. : )
dismayer666 I'd say it's more akin to building the guitar, radio or mp3 player in the first place.
As a 2-3 year old newbie in this realm and having started on arduino, it becomes restrictive REALLY quickly. Like you said, what if you want to do something you can't just get a module to do for you? Learning the basics opened up sooo many more avenues for me. Totally agree with you Dave!
more than half the things people use arduino's for these days could be done with 555s and a couple transistors anyways. Arduino was meant to be a learning tool for electronics newbs but It makes you wonder if its missing the mark, when people ask these types of questions...
I think the off the shelf, or straight from ebay, parts are where a lot of young hobbyists get started. Instant results with development boards is a big draw, it is certainly where I started. I struggle with mathematics, so it wasn't the easiest point to start from, but it was a natural progression for me to start playing on the breadboard, designing my own circuits and making my own custom boards. I hope that this is the case for most people.
I still do use off the shelf parts, development boards and 'modules', but I couple it with my own hard won electronics experience and the desire to progress that development into a custom circuit. I have learned more from failing that succeeding, so my journey pretty much reflects what Dave is saying.
I've learned this the hard way, this is why I'm here watching your videos.
Keep up with the good work Dave!
There are about dozen different ways to answer this question. I'm afraid Dave's version might alienate some software/maker/beginner folks. ("You kids are just USING electronics! That's LAME! Now....get off my lawn!")
EE's *do* use building blocks in the their design. All the time - almost any design of any reasonably complexity will have a recycled section of it's design. But you need to understand electronics to know the limits of those building block. Adafruit, sparkfun, and the like are glad to sell you a chip and a board on it. But unlike software - circuits have real limits that can bite you in the butt.
And that's just the start. If you stay inside a digital world of break out boards, Pi hats, and arduino sheilds, you'll be more-or-less safe. If you want to do that - have at it! No problem! Venture out of that - and you're in real trouble.
When you want to interface with the outside world, then you can forget about the safe cocoon of 5 volt logic, SPI and the tutorials. Want to transmit a signal 100 feet? Well, you're going to have a bad time at burning man. voltage drops and reflections are going to become something you'll wish you knew about.
Why should you learn electronics? Cause it's freaking awesome. Also, it's endless. You'll never learn it all. Even Dave will admit that he knows a fraction of what there is to learn. So if you love learning, electronics will never be "boring" that's for sure.
Not certain about the points made but ,if anyone else wants to discover introduction to electronics book try Sovallo Circuits Expert Fixer ( search on google ) ? Ive heard some amazing things about it and my mate got great success with it.
@@ferreyoyornc.a233 Shut up, spammer
I'm a mechanical engineer and found learning electronics so useful, especially that I developed hobby interests in making different integrated projects, requiring all mechanical, electronic and software skills. I designed and made a few boards that are actually working, and there was some debugging to do. Learning is fun, and it helps making things more functional, more valuable, and at the end more innovative. What's the fun when you're not learning even the basics things :) Great video!
Had that exact same question a few months ago from a friend. I wanted to find an example that was so basic, it really was ridicules but still made sense. Ended up explaining this: "It's just simply a nice thing to know, for example to find out if or when you need a basic 10k pull-up resistor in your project and what effect it has" - I think having that feeling that you don't need to learn basic electronics would fit Dave's saying "It's a trap for young players" very well! I hope everyone who dabbles with micro controllers sees the potential in knowing what and how the things around their micro controller work. And that basically applies to any field if it's programming, cooking, animating, photography or gardening or what ever :) It's nice to know the basics to get a good solid understanding on whats going on behind the scene.
Thumbs up for a great video Dave! (Good on ya Dave!)
Great video and i was happy to post and share with my Facebook friends.
Thank you for taking the time to make it.
Cheers
My son and I just finished watching this video and we both agree with Dave! :)
This has been a valuable bit of encouragement because I literally JUST got back into tinkering with electronics and tried building a working astable multivibrator circuit with the 555 timer and failed horribly. This has reminded me that it's not just the "end", but the "means" through which we solve everyday electronic problems. Thanks for all the helpful videos.
Agree with Dave. A few years ago I played around with Netduinos. Those small modules have limited current outputs, if you hook up an led, you will burn it in no time. The forums were full with complaints, people broke them all the time.The solution was easy, hooking up a transistor, but many guys did not understand it. Basics.
Great video. I asked myself the question 6 years ago and never looked back. Electronics is a way of life. I am completing my BA Language degree this year, but I still do electronics every day. If you ever designed your own electronics and it worked, good! Now you need to improve it. This is the reason for learning electronics. My grandfather did communications for 40years and to this day I still learn myself and him things we did not know. As he said "building a kit is being a kit builder, designing the kit is being a maker".
My grandfather is 68 years and still he feels that me using a Pi or Arduino is building a prototype. He says its time to make your own board now (just as Dave said). If it is a one off, sure!! Use what ever you feel like, but if you start thinking bigger, time to look at the world use. Most people will not use it the way you do, so plan ahead for to fail. To do this you need to learn electronics. This counts for software and hardware makers. Remember, being the next big thing requires you to know the market you are in. If you work the market differently , you are making.....if you simply reproduce, you are copying. Time to think about what you want to do with this project......?
I find an attitude of why learn basic anything, we consume without any understanding of how things work, look at the amount of people that drive & have no clue on how their car works beyond gas goes in here & key goes there, they break down at the roadside & often wait hours for what potentially could be a simple fix using basic skills.
I don't understand it, in fact find it quite ignorant, the attitude of oh I'll phone someone to repair it or just throwing something away & buying new over s simple repair, my fave being a cap going on the psu circuit of electronics, simple fix saves a lot of money with minimal effort.
madman1027
True that. I hate when people say that they "don't know" how to repair something like mobile phone screen, table fan or headlight bulb without even *trying*.
It's not like engineer minded people know 99% of the devices on earth by heart.
They'd need to just open the damn thing and see where it leads them! If it seems baffling, then just get the info from Google.
Some people act like repairmen have some mystical powers granted only for the chosen ones. No, they just investigate and use Google.
madman1027 I agree with you in principle but disagree to the degree you speak about it. If you wanted to get into learning the fundamentals of *everything* just so you can avoid having to rely on someone else to fix what is considered trivial tasks in various fields, that would take a good chunk of time out of your life and for many never pay off. Someone with no interest in how cars work is not going to spend the time learning the basics of how to fix and maintain basic aspects of cars for the few moments in their life they need to wait for a tow. It's just not that frequent unless you have REALLY bad luck with cars. At the very least I do think people should be able to do things like check their fluids. It's designed to be user friendly...
I think sometimes hobbyists and professionals forget how much work actually went into the initial learning process for what they do. Expecting everyone do to do that for everything so we don't need to rely on others for what is considered easy fixes is a bit silly.
That said, being able to replace caps is a godsend though that would save people a lot of money. I've lost count of the amount of things I've saved over such a trivial fix. I honestly wouldn't expect Joe Shmoe to be able to do it, nor would I advise him to poke around in high voltage electronics though, really. I had a friend a long while back who decided he was going to fix the caps in his LCD monitor that went bad, and ended up electrocuting himself because of the high current still residing in the device some time after turning it off. He was lucky to survive -- he almost didn't. I'm actually surprised I didn't kill myself as a kid, either. I used to dive into all manners of electronics, some exceedingly high current.
Completely fair point! I probably didn't word mine well enough. It's the lack of effort that frustrates me a little, these days there's a wealth of information about on the internet that's easily accessible, I wouldn't expect everyone to dive in but rather than throwing something away they could learn it's a simple fix & have it repaired or possibly repair it themselves. I believe it also helps people educate themselves a little & reduces their opportunity to be ripped of by dodgy repairmen/mechanics etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is that having the initiative to either take a look, a little basic research online or have a go (depending what it is) from time to time would make a huge difference to the way people just consume all the time. It would be unrealistic to expect everyone to learn a little about everything but exploring a little would return some of the practical hands on experience people are lacking. I feel I could go on regarding both extremes, we have a generation of people that consume & dispose yet we have a huge maker/engineering movement too, I don't know if it's because it interests me that I'm so aware of it or it is as well known.
Thanks for the response though, I've quite a bit to take away from this!!
Its all about time. I dont think a doctor is worth taking time to fix his car... so generally speaking, if you have a job at a certain rate per hour and you compare it to how many hours your are going to waste fixing your car, and then compare it for a professional per hour and pay... you see the point. You really cant be your own doctor, all the time for everything.
Dave, those upside down scopes are killing me! :)
The Bright Pixel They are just sleeping.
MadeOfSolder Shhhh.... you might wake them.
The Bright Pixel That's an Australian Thing something to do with being at the bottom of the planet.
The Bright Pixel its killing us all my friend.. its killing us all!!!
Gary Blenkinsopp I'm not sure I can sleep tonight. I have a recurring nightmare where David 2 is sneaking into my workshop and moving all my tools around...
Dave could have answered the question in 15 seconds but he is an awesome lecturer so by the end of the video the answer is ringing in my head. Thanks Dave.
Love the Chanel Dave I am 47 and retired due to ill health and I am loving spending the time learning the basics electronics I've learned how to build my own power supplies and enjoying every minute of it so I agree with you wholeheartedly
Obviously a hobbyist can learn as little or as much as he likes. It's up to him. But if he ever wants to go for a job in electronics he'll need to understand the stuff or he won't last long. I wish him well and hope he enjoys his hobby, at whatever level he chooses.
Really nice explanation! This is exactly the reason why I have been learning basic eletronics as a hobbyist.
4 Years old, but still friggin up-to-date. Thank you! I've been asked this myself by my "Maker"-Friends
When I wanted to get involved in electronics a year ago I was lucky enough to find your blog. Watched your video on starting an electronics lab, went out and purchased what I needed and hit the ground running. My youngest brother Larry Morgan Jr is lead Hardware Engineer at National Instruments so he steers me in the right direction. I am an analog guy. Not into micro controllers although they are us-full. I have to understand how things work on the most fundamental level because I know without that knowledge, your just faking it. . At my age (54) I know all to well that without a well rounded education and understanding of the basics, your LOST!!
THANK YOU DAVE!
This is so true. People tend to say they are electronics hobbyist when all they do is hook up some modules together and write a few lines of codes.
Hi my name is Mustafa I’ve studied electronics over 35 years ago I’ve recently taken it up again and I’m loving it I enjoy watching your program keep up the great work 😊
Totally agree. I was watching some videos on some software I wanted to start using with a future project, and came across a video where someone was using lego-mindstorms plus a software platform that *somebody else developed* for their final project to graduate college... It's sad, because all they had to do was prove they can configure off the shelf software and interface it with off the shelf hardware - really prove's Dave's point that hobbyist skills are often more important than degrees.
This Channel is gold mine, thank you Dave, from Tunisia
What you say is so true - The first thing that got me started was making a crystal set with a potato as the cats whisker and then a lump of coal for the crystal and both took a lot of jiggling to receive the bbc home service - all wire for coils and antenna salvaged from a busted valve radio a neighbour chucked out - I was 7, and now 65 this year - just the other day a neighbour chucked out a microwave oven I wanted the Transformer to make a welder but was surprised to find a switchmode PSU and the mains filter PCB with 10 amp fuses, so change of use gonna make a temperature controlled hot plate from the elements for surface mount pcbs oven. and no arduino involved - 2 nice big magnets from the duff magnetron. If I did not know about electronic circuits and components it would have ended up scraped so a big thumbs up for this video.
Dave, any chance of you doing an introduction to electronics series of videos on eevbolg? You'd make a great teacher, and it would be good to have a resource where electronics is taught from a more practical angle rather than academic.
Wish I watched these videos 20 years ago.
In terms of learning, best channel on TH-cam. Thank you so much.
This is by far, one of Dave's best videos!
It's really awesome listening you. I wish I had professor like you during my university time.
This question comes up in "State of Electronics" a lot. As I'm currently editing those episodes, I listen again to your views and can not agree more. There is an extreme danger of not only loosing the skill of trouble shooting but not understanding the fundamentals that lie beneath more complex systems, creates opportunities for 'someone else' who has a deeper knowledge, to be more of an expert then you. It also means your entry into electronics starts very high up on the levels of understanding which most likely means your knowledge of analogue electronics will be limited. It seems to me that analogue electronic skills, despite all the advancements in digital and software engineering is still vital for sensing the world around you, and outputting your result back into the mostly analogue world as well. Great video Dave!
Definitely agreed. No one said one has to learn it in just a year - I started very young with a breadboard kit with some components and a manual, and I am still learning a lot today, bit by bit at work.
nothing better than a fully-discrete components shortwave receiver or an analog color tv to start a solid journey in electronics. digital electronics is so powerful but hiding a huge layer of analog curiosities.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you used the word 'FUN', for instance the first sounds coming from that two transistor radio you just built, tremendous satisfaction!! Or if it does not work, even greater pleasure when you finally beat the bugs out of it. From then on......you're hooked!!!!
My Grandmother taught science in high school in the 1930-1940 time period. When she died I got her science book "The Science of Everyday Life". There was a lot of basic electronics in it. The people of the day though that everyone needed to know basic electronics just like basic biology or basic agriculture. It inspired me to love electronics.
I came across this video a While back and it really inspired me... Waiting on a few more products to come in and gonna get configuring haha love your videos!
I have to give some credit to the Open source hardware movement. I started blinking LED's with my Adruino and that led to this youtube channel and the desire to dive deeper into electronics. Arduino is my Gateway drug to this electronics addiction I have. Thank you Dave for being a super supporter and entertaining educator.
Thanks for all you do, Dave!
You're right. Today I wired up my first selfmade PCB. It is for a safe. Without the skills that I have learned, the troubleshooting to get this working would have been last for days.
Shorts between VCC and GND, Layout issues (Not connected GND plane), wrong soldered LEDs, diode for the coil and all sorts of things.
I'm happy to learn about that, and I've learned many things on your TH-cam channel.
Thank you :-)
Amen! This needed to be said for a long time.
in my whole in youtube this is first time I hear reasonable speech in my life good Work man keep it up
This question is in my head since many mounths/years ! ... thanks ! !!
In addition to the "why did that blow up?" reason, the modules are like lego-blocks. So much fun to build you're first machine, but you'll soon bump into the limits of your blocks. Building your own 'blocks' expands you're possibilities exponentially.
"the reddit", it's like when old people say "facespace"
***** facespace....nah man even old people know what's facebook
***** Myface
***** "facemash" was the beginings of what is now known as Facebook fyi.
Cameron Marks Haha really?! Sounds like FacePalm!
***** i love The Reddit internet forum website
Very important point well made Dave!
I love the way you talk about electronics you're so passion about it :D
This is so true im really new to the electronics stuff and I kind of feel like wiring an aduino isn't enough to properly understand electronics
I have almost nil electronics and agree with everything you said. The basics are very important and that comes across time and time again as I watch and try to learn from the very experienced like yourself.
good explanation and easy to understand for beginners and lay people, I like and inspiration for my channel mantek sarai
we need to know electronics because every day we live around it and use it almost all the time, we cannot live without it
Very well said
I can still remember the first day. I was trying to get a red LED running on a 12 V car battery basically for a interior switch. Ever since then I've been hooked on electronics you can't beat rummaging around components and finding out what they do.
The term "appliance operator" has been used to describe many newer ham radio operators who are only interested in assembling store bought gear and making contacts with it.
Electronics hobbyists are interested in learning new skills and applying their knowledge to solve problems. Whole different thing. I've been learning electronics for over 50 years, and I still love it.
I have started to learn my basics electronics with the book Make: Electronics. Now I want to go further and will read Horowitz' book 'the Art of Electronics'. And at the end of the day I want to build my own Segway :D
Dave you are spot on with this blab. You have to understand the basics to use the other products to their full extant. All of the things we learned in school, math, physics and electronic are the building blocks for what we learn in the real world. I had a professor at university ask all of the graduating seniors to stand one day near the end of term. He asked that they do one thing when they went out to work in the real world. He said " Please, when you start working keep your mouth shut and learn what the people who are working in your field have to teach you before you open your mouth. What you learn here at this university is just the beginning of your education, the basic building blocks of electrical engineering"
Brilliant, Thank you, this video is great for my sons, in a age where life is so easy (compared to the 70's & 80's) and quickly you can get what you want, be it food, amazon or online shopping, grocery shopping delivery to your door, learning woodwork, electrical/electronics, steel work, building, diagnostic skills, a tool kit, what tools to have when your on the tools, programming/coding, etc. My sons are taught the lot, enjoy sports, but the kids these days notice, the only electronics they need to know is how to turn on the t.v and PlayStation or xbox,
Thanks..It is my hobby from when I was like 7-10,no joke
And I will be making something like a computer from gates myself in couple of years
that was great dave and true to the point. in the days of electronic australia a lot of great projects some i build and some i did'nt you are right fix ones that did'nt
work, the best joe
Dave ,you hit the nail on the head.
that is simply the best explanation and motivation i´ve ever heard.
I personally try to do every project with discrete components or 74xx series logic, it´s more reliable and cheaper than MCU but often a challenge to make it work.. but that is the whole fun of electronics.
"I hope it doesn't work so you learn something".
Best piece of advice you can get in your whole life!
Excellent comment on the importance of learning electronics 101, 102, 103 etc. As an electrical engineer I see too many recent graduates with limited practical experience and limited basic electronics and sometimes electrical circuits!
Years a go I made an autoranging voltmeter from a Timex Sinclair computer and a tv, with extra hardware I added to make it all work. Programmed in z80 machine language. By the time I made it work radio shack was selling one for $30. Waste of time? Hardly. This and several projects like it resulted in a 30 year electronics career that was very rewarding. I have no degree, but a good grounding in the basics gave me a good life.
Teardown something big and awesome next PLEASE! I love teardown Tuesday!
There are times I forget you live in Australia. I'm up at 2:30 am in the U.S.A an I see a new video from you.
Being English its how I find most of my TH-cam content, Its great for when I can't sleep!
thanks . you really motivated me to learn electronics :)
Im only 15 and started at 13. The electronics hobby is a great one. I have learned so much
As an IT developer I can very much relate to what you are saying.
If you truly want to be a software engineer you need to understand what is happening at a byte level and understand the hardware too.
Sure you can write an 'application' easily enough with eclipse or visual studio however to really create a excellent piece of software you need to understand the basic principles of computer science.
For this reason I wear a binary watch so that even when I want to know what time it is I need to translate binary to decimal - it keeps my mind working all the time.
When I was a kid, we had a store in town called Radio Inc. where there was always a pot of coffee on, and it was a hang out for both hobbyists and professional electronics techs. If you needed help with anything electronic, that was the place to go. They had all the discrete components boards etching supplies, cases, tools test equipment and the whole nine yards under one roof. They also had a large meeting room and they would have sessions where people from Heathkit, Texas Instruments, Ramsey, HP, Ohio Scientific and numerous other companies would come in for a dog and pony show and the public was usually invited. That was a great way to learn about a new scope, new kits, etc. There is nothing like that around anymore. They also had a reference library with all the Sams ever published, and reference sheets on all the solid state and tube components. I learned so much from dropping by and hanging out. I had 3 years of vocational electronics in high school, and I also got a couple jobs through contacts I made there. But like you said, hobbyists don't have the basic skills anymore.
It is a shame, because there is a need today for one-off solutions that few know how to build.
There are several groups that have started teaching those basic skills to kids. Teaching basic programming skills with the Raspberry Pi or Arduino, and interfacing to custom electronics through the gpio. But even there, the numbers are too small, and it will take several years before any real impact is realized.
BTW, good video.
Thanks for the pep talk, as I mostly only know the basics, I was feeling a bit obsolete.
To learn any fundamental is important for extended idea and total skill of something. I agree 100 % suggestion of Dave.
Outstanding advice mate!
This. I'm a web developer. Bought an Arduino earlier this year. Toyed a bit with a breadboard and the basic examples but didn't feel like I was learning anything at all. Let alone I was "doing" something cool with it. Over the space of a few months: got myself a soldering iron and a boatload of components, started tinkering and reading such books as "Getting started with Electronics" by Forrest Mims. :-) I'm a novice, but I'm learning each day! Love it.
Great answer Dave.
Great spell dave Hope all the young Players take your Advice !!
Completely agree! Even with Arduino and other similar platforms, there's not a lot you can do without basic electrical knowledge. On the other hand Arduino is a great way for new people getting into the hobby because you can make a couple of simple projects pretty quickly and then have a go at changing them, experimenting, and learning along the way.
I just got encouraged to learn more!
Embedded systems programming is a legitimate step up in the layer of hardware abstraction. When you tackle problems that come up at higher abstractions, the amount of lower-level details become overwhelming. The pattern of thought is to consider hardware -- and the complexity of analog design -- as a functional block (i.e., not in terms of their physical properties but in terms of abstract qualities like the service it provides "what it does", its "input requirements", its "performance", and its "operational requirements"). For example, you can think of a summer op-amp circuit in terms of its electrical interconnections, part counts, and their individual specs or you can think of it as a "device which gives you the sum of signals". Thinking about circuits in terms of functional blocks allows people to compose those blocks to create more complex systems which can 'do more'. The trade off is that you make assumptions about the performance of the hardware that implements the functionality of each of those blocks.
This is where basic electronics becomes important. You need to be able to design/improve the building block so that it delivers the service and functionality promised (or as people say "the functional block performs 'to spec'").
The ability to solve problems at high-level of abstractions allow you to create electronic devices with more sophisticated behavior. Knowledge about electronics and analog/mixed signals help you troubleshoot and design better building blocks that go into those devices. Knowing how to program Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and MCUs help you solve a different class of problems than knowing electronics. It's apples-and-oranges to say one is more important than the other.
Sir i totally agree with u
I learnt this after blowing up my nano and pro micro because of a single relay aghhhh it was so annoying but now it's fixed just because of u thank you sir and pls keep making these awesome videos
Hi Dave,
I'm really inspired by this video. I've been playing around with Arduinos for some time but when it comes to building more sophisticated or custom projects, I always get stuck trying to understand what the circuits on Instructables mean.
That said, what are some ways that you would recommend learning basci electronics (ideally for free)? I wanna to get the real stuff down and rollin.
Such true words. This video can be applied to any science, engineering, or mathematics field.
This is very true. I have always enjoyed working with electronics directly (breadboards and such) since I was about 6 when I got my first electronics/magnets kit. I of course learned simple series and parallel circuits, and moved on to breadboarding things up later and recently I have shifted more into the RC hobby, working on a quadcopter project. Watching videos of the RC people explain about wiring your own up, I am amazed at how close the electronics and RC stuff is related, but yet the terminology is a bit different, notably when RC guys mention things like BEC's, SBECS, or UBECS, which are all forms of voltage regulators, switching and linear regs, but the exact same concepts.
I have found that you do really need to use knowledge of how to wire things up and deal with things like signal integrity on signal wires when working on the electronics side of building my drone. Often I would run into issues where some board or module would not work properly, and even though the LEDs and stuff were lit up, the board was unresponsive, and it turns out to be a power supply issue because of how my grounding was daisy chained and not very good. That is where a multimeter comes in-handy. Also I had to build up some power supply LC filtering boards to clean up the 12V supply to the camera so that way the noise did not work it's way into the analog video signal resulting in dark lines and stuff.
Dave, this of course begs the question...how do you recommend the average home hobbyist learn basic electronics? Book title, and/or on-line course? Thanks for the great videos. Tom
I know this is an old video but it's so true. This conversation reminds me of back in the 90s when we had "script kiddies" trying to run DDOS exploits and others. It's the same when you ask a youngling if they know computers and they response includes words like Twitter, Snapchat, etc. The low level coders (e.g. assembly / machine coders) probably said this same thing when languages like C, Pascal, Basic, etc. came out. Digressing, I love your videos! You are so helpful and knowledgeable.
I totally agree. Btw.. thanks for your time and videos.
I really agree whit you. I haven't started studying electronics because for me would be a hobby, would be awesome if you make a series of video explaining the basic stuff for guys like me.
Couldn't agree more Dave. I love using Arduinos and little modules, but I get much more satisfaction from building up a circuit than I do from running code. I've got a real soft spot for digital logic using 4000 and 7400 chips, and I've learned a lot about power supply design and decoupling just from having my breadboarded circuits misbehave.
I do C# programming, and bought a netduino to play about with. I quickly realised it was good for improving my coding, but I didn't have a clue how the electronics actually worked.
I liked your video Dave, but it would have been great if you could have taken it slightly further and suggested some good learning resources (perhaps online) or starting points for those wishing to learn (like me).
Basic electronics allows you to to optimize the circuits, you could use a $30 arduino to flash a led, or use two transistors, two resistors and two capacitors for $1. It also allows to overcome software limitations.
6:40 The term is "script kiddy". It applies to a range of "copy tutorials / stack overflow" people regardless of whether it's dev boards or websites.
This is valid on so many areas today because the kids today have just stopped learning the fundamentals today. It's not just electronics. Look at computers and programming. When I started you either had basic or assembler (pretty much) to write your own stuff and this is how we learned. No Google - just plain old books (very expensive I might add) and brute force learn by doing - which meant failing hundreds of times until it worked. Eventually you remembered most failures and you started getting better. The same goes for music. Look at all these kids playing "Guitar Hero"... I played the guitar when I was a kid and I became really good at it, and so did so many of my friends, although we all were playing different instruments. I can't see how you can learn any skills from playing "Guitar Hero" imho...
I got into electronics at a young age but amidst coding demos and playing guitar I never learned as much as I'd wanted and it faded away. Later in life I picked it up again and now I understood better what I was doing and shortly thereafter I had designed my first circuit on my own PCB, and the rest is history. I'm still learning - but I'm having loads of fun, even at my age, and people should try to learn something from scratch and from the bottom up because there is huge satisfaction when it clicks - and the acquired skills can be applied to so many different areas that it's never wasted time to even learn ancient technologies... Heck - it wasn't until I had really learned MC68000 that I fully understood assembler programming - which has helped me enormously when transitioning to electronics, so dive in at the deep end because learning is actually really fun!!!
Thanks Dave @ +EEVblog for posting this video!
...therefore more of my favorite Fundamentals Friday videos.